1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a matrix character generation system, and more particularly, to a matrix character generation system for generating a character by using a character table and a stroke table.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Printed Chinese characters can be generally divided into two categories: contour characters and matrix characters. A contour character is usually formed by using a stroke-combination character technique which treats each character as a structural graph combined by strokes, each stroke being a sub-graph of the character and consisting of a contour. Alternatively, a matrix character is treated as a matrix graph formed by points drawn in a matrix.
Please refer to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 shows the matrix graph 10 of a 16.times.16 scale matrix character. The matrix graph 10 comprises 256 small squares. Each square is black or white and corresponds to one bit of data. The digital number of "0 " is represented by a white square and "1" is represented by a black square. The data of the matrix graph is stored in sequence from the upper left to the lower right of the matrix. All the black and white squares in the matrix graph 10 constitute a Chinese character, e.g. {character pullout}, and are sequentially stored in this way:"00 00 00 00 06 00 00 0C 00 18 00 39 F0 68 00 08 00 0B FC 08 00 08 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00". The total data amount of this 16.times.16 scale matrix graph is 32 bits. The bigger the matrix, the larger the data amount. A 24.times.24 scale character corresponds to 72 bits of data, a 32.times.32 scale character corresponds to 128 bits, and a 48.times.48 scale character corresponds to 288 bits. A Chinese font comprises about thirteen thousand characters and as such a 48.times.48 scale Chinese font corresponds to about 3.744 MB of data which can be reduced to about 1.5 MB when a good compression technique is applied. However, 1.5 MB of data is still too large for a small sized electrical commercial product, such as a beeper, a cellular phone, etc. Moreover, if the small sized electrical commercial product is equipped with more than one matrix font with different sizes, the required memory becomes prohibitively large leading to increased costs.